Battle of the Persian Gate
battle between Alexander the Great and Ariobarzanes near Persepolis in a small mountainpass known as the Persian gate along the Royal road
The Battle of the Persian Gate took place as part of the Wars of Alexander the Great. In the winter of 330 BC, Ariobarzanes of Persis led a last stand with his outnumbered Persian army at the Persian Gate, near Persepolis, and held back the Macedonian army for approximately a month. However, through captured prisoners of war or a local shepherd, Alexander found a path around to flank the Persian troops from the rear, allowing him to capture half of Persia proper in another decisive victory against the Achaemenid Empire.
Background
The Achaemenid Empire suffered a series of defeats against the Macedonian forces at Granicus (334 BC), Issus (333 BC) and Gaugamela (331 BC), and by the end of 331 BC Alexander had advanced to Babylon and Susa. A Royal Road connected Susa (the first Persian capital city in Elam) with the more eastern capitals of Persepolis and Pasargadae in Persis, and was the natural avenue for Alexander's continued campaign. Meanwhile, King Darius III was trying to raise a new army at Ecbatana. Ariobarzanes was charged with preventing the Macedonian advance into Persis. He relied heavily on the terrain Alexander needed to pass through. There were only a few possible routes through the Zagros Mountains, which were made more hazardous by winter's onset.
After the conquest of Susa, Alexander split the Macedonian army into two parts.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Battle of the Persian Gate” is battle between Alexander the Great and Ariobarzanes near Persepolis in a small mountainpass known as the Persian gate along the Royal road. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Battle, Persian and Gate, not as a finished interpretation.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q112016. Authority coordinates are 30.708, 51.599. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of the Persian Gate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.